


Heart of the Matter

by orphan_account



Category: Rammstein
Genre: Angst, Brief but Non-graphic Mentions of Illness, Cuddling, Descriptions of Mortality and Dying, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, No Mentions of Cause of Death/No Graphic Depictions, Organ Transplantation, Philosophy, Short One Shot, sleeping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-27
Updated: 2020-01-27
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:29:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22432636
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Paul received a heart transplant from a stranger that saved his life. Now, a year later, that stranger's lover comes to meet the recipient of the transplant.Plenty of ruminations of life and death, fate and destiny, guilt and worthiness.
Relationships: Paul Landers/Till Lindemann, Richard Kruspe/Till Lindemann
Comments: 17
Kudos: 58





	Heart of the Matter

**Author's Note:**

> May not be for the faint of heart or anybody that doesn't want to risk crying. A brief introspection of the self in the face of receiving something extraordinary.

Paul cannot stop moving.

The sheets on his bed don’t look straight enough, so he pulls them and smooths them over until they reach an adequate presentation. The canned food in his cabinet doesn’t have the labels facing out, so he gets up on his toes to fix them, turning the tins until they are all readable. Ah, the jacket hanging over the back of his dining room chair doesn’t look good just out like that, and so he moves it to the closet next to the front door and slips it on a hanger. Paul’s afraid that if he stops, even just for a second, that all of that pent-up anxiety will give him a heart attack. Which would be horribly tragic, even if a little ironic. 

Considering his medical history, perhaps there should be a better turn of phrase he uses than something ‘giving him a heart attack.’ Paul considers how much hearts come up in language: broken hearts, heavy hearts, lighthearted, eat your heart out, in a heartbeat, heart and soul. They’re infinite and inescapable. Understandably so; they do have feelings. Clench when they’re upset, race when they’re overjoyed. At that moment, his is in his throat, so close it’s as though he can reach in and brush it with his fingers. Pressing his hand flat over his sternum, he feels the proud beat of that muscle under his touch, spreading life through his body. So strange, to imagine where this heart has been, what it has experienced, and he will simply never know it all. 

He lies down on his couch, resolving that the apartment is as clean as it’s going to get, and that he should just relax for the time being. Eyes closing, he huffs a deep breath and focuses on breathing. Till said that he’d arrive at around noon so that they could talk, make lunch if they both ended up hungry, and then part ways. Simple enough, and yet it seems so daunting. The clock that hangs above his dining table ticks seconds away, closer and closer and closer to the estimated arrival time.

What do they even have to say to each other? What’s there to talk about? They’re both complete strangers, connected only through the abstraction of tissue and membrane. What if Paul isn’t honoring the other man’s life the way Till thinks he should? That he’s undeserving? That the heart should’ve gone to someone else? By all means, there can and will be better people than he that come along. Perhaps he’d stolen this heart from someone who would’ve wrote the next great novel or made an incredible life-changing breakthrough in the field of chemistry. Something better than what Paul has been doing, working in a library five days a week and sitting on his ass on the weekends. He doesn’t want Till to think badly of him. Because he’s grateful. Truly. Earnestly. He doesn’t think that he could ever convey how lucky he feels and how happy he is to be alive. The best outcome would be that Till is satisfied, but at the very least, he hopes that he could forgive him.

A timid knock at the door has Paul jolting up from the couch. Not one to fight fate, having fought and won previously, he gets up and walks to the door and swiftly unlocks the deadbolt to open it to his promised guest.

Till is a tall man, though does not impose, offset by the soft features of his face. Paul can’t help but think he looks regal, with his steady eyes and hardened lips, fit for a king to look out over his conquests. Maybe that’s how he’s trying to present himself. Maybe he’s trying to hold himself back. From crying, from yelling, from leaving. 

“Paul?” the man asks to affirm he’s correct in his location.

Reaching a hand out to affirm with a pleasant grin, Till grabs it in turn and shakes it briefly. “Then you must be Till.”

“I’m happy to meet you,” he replies, but Till doesn’t portray happy more than he does a solemnness. Either way, he reached out, and Paul doesn’t mind having him.

“You as well,” Paul says, then stepping aside. “Please, come in.”

Striding in, Till removes his coat as Paul closes and locks the door behind them. He stands in the kitchen, wringing his jacket in his hands, holding his head high to look around the space, glancing to the couch, to the paintings on the wall, briefly into the bedroom, out the window.

“Can I take your coat?” Paul suggests out of convention, and Till nods with a tight-lipped smile as he hands it over. Once it’s out of his grasp, he shoves his hands into his pockets, shoulders pinched up to his ears.

After hanging it up to join the coat he’d put away earlier, he doesn’t ask if Till wants a drink, instead doing the simple work of filling a glass up with ice and running the tap.

Eyeing him like a prey object monitoring the location of the predator, Till watches him as he approaches and pushes it towards him, which is accepted by a hand and a nod.

“Do you want to sit, Till?” Paul says, and pulls out one of the dining chairs for him.

“Oh, thank you.”

They both sit then, Till clenching his hands around the glass as he settles in, knuckles noticeably white, and Paul sits adjacent. What’s the protocol on this? The hospital sent him home with instructions for care, but not for fucking this. His first go with the immediate family had been just fine, and he got to hear some stories and shed a few tears, but this feels different. This was his lover. And they’re alone together. The dynamic is different. The feelings are different.

Clearing his throat, Till speaks. “You have a really nice apartment.”

Small talk. Easy. Easier than what’s to come. “Thank you.”

“My apartment could definitely use some cleaning. My room mate and I fall a little slack on that. We work a lot so we hardly have the time,” Till muses.

With a lightened mood, Paul tells him, “If I can be completely honest, I kinda just cleaned today. For this. Didn’t want you coming into my filth.”

“Well, you did a good job.” It sounds true, so Paul is happy that his efforts made a difference.

Silence falls between them again, and Paul feels lost. They’re dancing around what they’re here for. They’re not here to talk about the hygiene of their living spaces. This is just niceties. Paul would rather get to the grit. Rip off the band aid right now and get to the heart of the matter. Start really talking about what they want to talk about.

Boldly, he starts. “Last month was the one-year anniversary.”

Till nods, takes the first sip of his water. “Yes, it was.” Strained. Different meanings for two people connected by the same event. 

Swallowing, he continues. “I have to tell you that I didn’t think that I would make it this far, to see this year. I figured that I was going to die on the transplant list like everybody else does.”

“How long were you on the list?” Till questions, leaning into the table.

“Two months. Not very long. But if I’d waited much longer you and I wouldn’t be sitting here.”

Till drums his fingers on the table. “Quite an unfortunate way for us to meet anyhow.” Very true, Paul thinks. These strings of destiny that bind us all can be so cruel. Particularly for the man that sits next to him. Particularly for the ash and dust of the man from whom he stole his heart. 

“Can I ask you about Richard? I just want to know a little bit more about who he was.”

“Sure.” A light comes on in Till’s eyes, and he straightens up.

“How long were you and him together?”

Tutting, Till looks up and away to count hours, days, weeks, months, years to find a satisfactory answer. “Three and a half years.” Paul nods. That’s quite an incredible length of time. “I thought I was going to spend my whole life with him.” 

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.”

Paul hangs his head a moment before looking back at the other man.

“Can you tell me what he was like?”

A smile dances across Till’s lips as he describes him. Passionate. A perfectionist. Enjoyed running and hiking, tolerated swimming. He had the greatest smile, and a laugh that could right every wrong. So goddamn concerned with the way his hair looked! Collected classic vinyl of bands Paul’s never heard of before. Worked as an administrator for a philharmonic – he loved music. Played violin like nobody else. Had a quirk where he said ‘ya know,’ every other word. They had silly little inside jokes that Paul doesn’t understand. 

In his wallet, Till keeps a picture. It’s a picture of him, with silvery hair, and a huge smile, and a thin silver earring in his left lobe. Quite handsome, Paul can admit. Probably would’ve turned his own head, if not for his appearance, then for his personality. He’s wearing a black collared shirt, exposing just a small sliver of his chest. Paul zeroes in on that bit of revealed flesh; horrible to think of what would happen to it some years later. 

He listens to the stories. Richard once accidentally knocked over an expensive piece of art at a museum after tripping and felt terrible, but the museum let it slide. They once spent a whole evening ripping up the house to find car keys only to find them in the dishwasher but couldn’t decide whose fault it really was. For their first Christmas, Richard bought him a two-player board game and the whole day playing it. They had a happy life together. Without realizing it, Paul is beaming listening to the lived experiences. 

“I loved him so much. I would’ve died for him. But, I guess that’s not the way it had to be.”

Paul looks down at his hands, looking for a distraction while he tries to construct where to go from here. He finds the wrinkles, the fingerprints. Funny to think that palmistry has designated a heart line. Just another example of the use of the heart for some arbitrary purpose. He doesn’t know what the heart line is supposed to mean or indicate. Not that any of it would matter to him anyway. His palms can’t tell him anything that he wouldn’t defy – after all, he was supposed to be dead, too. A box of ashes on a mantle. A casket with a headstone. Paul Heiko Landers. Beloved son and brother. He clenches his fists.

“I do want to say something I’ve wanted to say for a while.” Paul takes in a deep breath and pushes it out. Just say it. Lay it on the table. Leave it there. If Till accepts it, then he does. If he doesn’t that’s okay too. But he’s had time to think. To word this. Practice it. Recite it to Richard’s mother and daughter. “I am so thankful for what Richard gave to me. I just want you to know that first and foremost. Not a day goes by that I don’t think about it. That I don’t thank God that I’m so goddamn blessed to have this heart. I had accepted that I was going to die, and I was okay with that, but then the hospital called me and told me that they had a match, and. . .”

Till’s eyes are swimming with tears.

“I was so overjoyed for this second chance. But I really am sorry that it meant that Richard had to be taken away from you. I can tell how much you loved him, and it sounds like you had so much good together. If me trading this heart back meant that Richard could come back, I’d do it. Restore the natural order of things, I guess,” Paul says, trying to end on a lighter note.

Till gives him a stern look, one that he’s seen from his father after he’d done something wrong and was going to get reprimanded for it. “You didn’t kill Richard. Do not ever feel bad for having his heart.” Shoulders hunching in, Till shakes his head. “Nobody should have died. But I’m glad that something good could come out of all of this. A net positive. Helping other lives at the cost of one. Someone else got his corneas. Another got some bone marrow. One more got a kidney. That comforts me. That he didn’t die for nothing.”

“It’s good to hear that you’ve made some peace with that,” Paul explains, and it’s a relief to hear that Till doesn’t harbor any anger or ill will. It takes away some of the guilt of having this heart.

“It’s taken a long time, and I haven’t fully wrapped myself around that concept, but I know it’s true. Maybe this was all part of the master plan for all of us,” Till says, and he turns his head away and brings a hand up to his face to wipe at his eyes. “All I want is for you to live the way you want to, without feeling like you owe anybody. That heart was a gift.”

The gift of life. The gift of living and breathing, of laughing and crying, of seeing and touching and feeling. A gift unlike anything else that Paul could’ve ever have hoped to receive. A gift as consequence, a gift as opportunity. A gift that will guide him to a natural end, instead of the abrupt termination that had been promised to him. A doctor had cupped that heart in both of his hands, and placed it at the alter of Paul’s being, laid it before him, and willed it to cooperate to bring him back to life. An offering of a future. Take this and go forth.

“Thank you, Till. For telling me about him and everything.”

“And thank you, Paul, for letting me come and meet you.”

They take a moment to collect themselves. This ended up being better than Paul had initially anticipated. He’s glad that this meeting took place. So that he could help Till come to terms with what became of Richard. So that he could help assuage his own guilt and fears. 

“Paul, can I ask you something?”

“Anything.”

“Can I put my head on your chest and just listen to your heartbeat for a while?”

Pausing, Paul contemplates this, but his answer comes freely and easily and is the one that Till wanted to hear. “Of course.” It’s really the least that he can do, considering. 

Moving to get up from the dining table, Paul moves to the couch with the intent that Till is to follow, and he does. 

Social formalities and rules don’t seem to matter, not in a situation as this, and Paul props himself up against one of the pillows and sprawls out. With outstretched arms, he beckons Till to join him. Crawling over the smaller man, Till lies next to him on his side. They mutually adjust to get comfortable. Paul throws a hand behind his head and naturally lets the other rest on Till’s back. Till allows an arm to rest across Paul’s belly, while resting his head against Paul’s sternum. Typically, this would be an odd arrangement, allowing someone he’s only known for a few hours to do this, but to hell with the rules.

Paul feels Till relax and sees him close his eyes as he loses himself in the beating of the heart under his ear. The heart of his lover, the heart of a stranger. He’s heard this rhythm before, in a different time, in a different place, in another life. Till loved the heart within Paul, the person the heart belonged to, and he’s certain that he always will.

Isn’t death typically characterized by the stopping of the heart? Supposing with the way medicine has advanced, there may need to be a different metric, Paul considers. Richard’s gone, but he’s so very alive in this moment. Every whoosh whoosh whoosh of blood thrumming under his skin/tissue/muscle/breastplate a reminder of the legacy of his life.

Paul doesn’t draw a line or put a time limit on this. There doesn’t need to be one. These small hours pale in comparison to the ones that he has gained and what Richard has lost. This is okay, truly. By the slow rise and fall of his chest, he can tell that Till has fallen asleep, and that’s okay, too. Had he done that before, when Richard was alive? Fallen asleep to the beating of his heart? His own private lullaby? 

Not wanting to disturb him, but also calmed into the draw of rest, he allows his eyes to fall shut as well, with the last thought on his mind being one of thanks. He hopes that wherever Richard is, that he is heard.

**Author's Note:**

> Feedback always appreciated (first fic, after all!).


End file.
